LS1 has been a long road for the ALICE team. From major improvements to the 19 sub-detectors to a full re-cabling and replacement of LEP-era electrical infrastructure, no part of the ALICE cavern has gone untouched...

The electric charge of lead ions, when accelerated to ultra-relativistic velocities, is the source of an intense flux of high-energy quasi-real photons. Ultra-peripheral collisions – the interaction of a photon with a target at impact parameters larger than the sum of the radii of the incoming particles, where hadronic interactions are suppressed – provide a clean tool to study photon-induced production processes at the LHC (CERN Courier November 2012 p9).

Recently, the Department of CIS (Computer and Information Science) at KU (Korea University) became an associate member of the ALICE collaboration. Faculty members of the department attended a meeting arranged by another Korean associate member, KISTI (Korea Institution of Science and Technology Information) in June 2014, where they met CERN scientists Pierre Vande Vyvre and Peter Hristov. Several topics of the ALICE experiment were introduced during the meeting and the department decided to join the collaboration to contribute in some of these topics.

Installation of the DCal, the second component of the ALICE Di-Jet calorimeter detector, was completed in late October 2014, two weeks ahead of its scheduled installation window. The DCal is situated in the ALICE central barrel, 180 degrees in azimuth from the EMCal, and completes the calorimetric coverage of the open regions of ALICE. This configuration enables back-to-back coincidence measurements of jets with various triggers, including jets, photons, and high momentum hadrons and electrons. The DCal thereby expands the ALICE jet program significantly.

Eugenio Nappi was elected vice-president of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) by the Board of Directors, after serving as a member of the Executive Board since 2012. As of November 1st, Nappi will replace Antonio Zoccoli and join the other vice-president, Antonio Masiero.

It has been a busy summer for the teams preparing the restart of the SPS complex. During LS1 a vast programme of repair, consolidation and improvements was completed, and surprises came up too, leading for instance for a last minute replacement of the high energy beam dump, just weeks before the restart of the machine.